Tease(10)

“I think if you could understand where everyone is coming from—Emma’s parents, the lawyers, the kids at school . . .” She holds her hands out, gesturing wide as if she’s talking about the whole world. “You’re not alone, you know. But you’re very closed off. You’re in your own world, and no one can understand what that’s like unless you let them in.” She pulls her hands back together, forming a little space between her palms. My little world.

I shake my head. Then I shake it again. Then I stand up, grabbing my bag from the couch.

“I have to come here, fine. I talk to you, I talk to Natalie. But it’s not my fault that you don’t understand. It’s not my fault that the reporters are a bunch of idiots, that Emma’s parents were obviously totally crappy. I just want my life back. Maybe it was stupid, but it was mine.” I point to her hands, still cupped together, and add, “And it was bigger than that.”

We stare at each other silently for a minute. Teresa looks at me steadily, and I bet she thinks this is good, that she’s proving some point right now. I want to tell her she’s wrong, but I’m tired of talking, of fighting, of defending myself.

So I shake my head one last time, and then I walk right past her chair and out the door.

Alex has been at baseball camp this whole week, and Tommy’s at a regular one, so the house is cold and empty when I get home from Therapist Teresa. My car hadn’t gotten any cooler during my hour of interrogation, so I’m all sweaty again, and the cool air in the house is a relief. So is the shower; as soon as I’m upstairs I just strip, dump my clothes where I’m walking in the hall, and get right into the water.

It’s so embarrassing to be seeing a therapist. A lot of people at school do it, but not very many of them admit it—and only, like, one or two don’t seem totally pathetic when they do. When everyone found out that Emma saw one, which was pretty much the same week she started at Elmwood, she was basically crucified. It hadn’t taken anyone long to discover that her parents hadn’t just moved across town for a bigger house—the internet is nothing if not useful for dirty details on transfer students. Emma had been a slut from way back. Or, as they’ve been saying on TV, troubled. She knew how to make trouble, that’s for damn sure.

With a sigh, I wrap a towel around my head and walk back to my room naked, reluctantly picking up the clothes I’d tossed. It’s a nice break, not to be worrying about the boys. But it’s lonely, too. Mom enrolled them in basically every summer activity known to man, just to keep them away from the house and the evening news. At least we don’t get so many reporters these days. Nothing much is going on that’s newsworthy right now, I guess. Even if we go to trial, it won’t be until this fall or even winter. Natalie says that’s really fast, but right now it feels like forever. And the fall was supposed to be about other things; it was supposed to be a time I could look forward to. When Brielle and I were supposed to be enjoying our senior year. When Dylan was supposed to be starting at the university. Last I heard, they hadn’t decided whether to take away his scholarship, but it’s pretty likely they will, especially if all the lawsuits go to trial. All the guys are probably going to defer, Dylan included.

But I’m not supposed to talk to him anymore either. I mean, things had gotten so weird even before Emma . . . left. And then the lawyers got called and our parents went crazy and everything fell apart completely. Now, things are . . . still weird. Weirder.

I dump my clothes on my bedroom floor and crawl under the covers on my still-unmade bed. It’s a beautiful summer day, the kind I used to spend at Brielle’s pool or forcing my brothers to go to the park.

But the only thing I’m good at anymore is sleeping. So I close my eyes.

“Sara!” Thump thump thump.

Perfect. What awesome, perfectly perfect timing.

“Sara, your car is blocking my—oh. Are you sleeping?”

“No,” I say, my voice muffled by my pillow. And by a couple thousand layers of sarcasm.

My mom heaves this really big sigh and goes, “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”

I push back the covers and look at her. Work clothes—the kind of Ann Taylor boringness that you wouldn’t be able to describe to the cops if someone went missing. Reasonably good hair—on the short side, but still a pretty chestnut brown, and not as short as most moms’ (but not too long, like Brielle’s mom’s, who is gorgeous but also trying too hard). Angry face—always, always the angry face.

I close my eyes again. “My keys are downstairs,” I say.

“Well, good, then you’ll know where to find them.” I can hear her picking things up off my floor and I can’t even find the energy to tell her to stop.

But after a long pause, I sit up.

There’s a semiclean T-shirt on the foot of my bed and I grab it, pulling it on, which requires taking the towel off my head. Mom hangs my abandoned clothes over the back of my desk chair. Her eyes linger on the stack of summer school books on the desk, but she doesn’t say anything. When she turns back to me she holds her hand out, and I silently pass her the towel.

“I wish you’d help out around here,” she says.

“The boys aren’t home.”

“There’s a lot that needs to be done besides driving the boys around. The kitchen is a mess, there’s no food down there but cereal—”